Peter Sallen: A Colored Man.

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Author Comments

This took me about 2 hours to make. I made it with pencil/colored pencil/ sharpie marker. I had the idea on Saturday, when I was doing Feed the People. Feed the People is like Meals on Wheels. Except the people dont live anywhere (homeless), and they find you and vice versa. But sometimes, when the van breaks down, (this was one of those times) the homeless people have to come to us for food. It happened like this:

We were just about to close up for the night until next week, when this old man who was all beat up, (looked like the picture i drew) came in with a plate asking for food. We had a lot of leftovers so we gave him some food. Then he sat on a chair and immediately waved us over. He wanted to talk with us. We all kind of shrugged and got a seat. We all eventually got a conversation going. His name was Peter Sallen. He was 57 years old and he fought in the Cold War, alongside his wife, son, and best friend. Sadly, his three companions died during the war. He came home depressed. He eventually got into drinking, like many veterans. He soon lost his money, and his house. He said he had been living on the streets for about three years nor. We asked him about his black eye and cuts and bruises. He said he got in a fight and lost. But even then Peter seemed so cheerful and grateful. He even said he thought losing his money was a good thing, having no more money to fuel his alcohol dependence.
After that, he finished his meal, talked some more, said goodbye, and left.

After he left, I kept thinking, this guy has been through so much. I couldn't believe he could find the silver lining in losing everything. So I made a tribute to Peter Sallen. Here you are. Enjoy.

P.S. There is no exaggeration on the facial wounds. Everything on the picture was there in real life. Even the beard that started on the lips. I gotta say, he looked really different, having grey hair, but a black beard. Oh well, anyway, Enjoy!

Reviews

The overall quality of this image is quite limited, as it's either the camera quality, or the image itself, which is of poor quality. I'm not sure if it isn't both, to be honest. If you're going to take a picture of a piece such as this, lie it down flat and get the camera balanced, to minimise shake. Most modern digital cameras have an auto focus, which they use, but this one seems not to have used it, or to have the settings switched off for it.

Your idea about using the writing alongside it would have been great, had either have been of good enough quality. Saying that a soldier fought in the Cold War would be like someone trying to pretend that they were in the SAS. There was little-to-no actual combat during that period of political and military tension, it was all a big stand-off, regarding who was going to launch nuclear weapons at the other. Fortunately, neither of them did. I'm playing the BS card.

On to the drawing, which is clearly a face that has seen abuse over the years. I can see the age lines, the bags under the eyes from lack of sleep, plus the bruising that you've added around the eye. I have no idea about the massive black void beneath the smiling mouth, so that's pure confusion, as with the wispy grey around the chin - if he's homeless, think of it along the lines that he's less likely to be able to shave at all, so hair on the cheeks and upper lip as well. The mouth seems too uniform, with perfectly square teeth, although they are yellowed and some of them are black, as if to portray cartoon gaps. Perhaps with the light on the front of the face, you would be able to see a tongue, or some of the inside of the mouth behind them?

The colouring is messy, as if you have attacked it from all angles, which does take away from the quality of the piece, as if you were rushing it. Take your time, spread the colour evenly, in the same direction (side to side, up and down or diagonally, but not a mix of all three) and the piece will look better. You've got a bloody smear under the guy's nose - why not have some sort of stain from the corner of the mouth, that was wiped away with the back of a grubby sleeve in the immediate aftermath of the fight?